Fovntain
2018
Solo Exhibition
Smith Studio, SA
2018
Solo Exhibition
Smith Studio, SA
Nagsweet I
2018
Brass and melted gum rosin
103 x 77cm
2018
Brass and melted gum rosin
103 x 77cm
Nagsweet II
2018
Aquatint-etched brass and ink
103 x 77cm
2018
Aquatint-etched brass and ink
103 x 77cm
Nagsweet III
2018
Aquatint-etched brass and ink
103 x 77cm
2018
Aquatint-etched brass and ink
103 x 77cm
“As they disappear
I toast my ghost
In aqua vite
Luminous presence
Here and gone.”
2018
Ice, watercolour, acrylic ink, Zerkall Intaglio 250gsm, brass and French Oak
Dimensions variable
I toast my ghost
In aqua vite
Luminous presence
Here and gone.”
2018
Ice, watercolour, acrylic ink, Zerkall Intaglio 250gsm, brass and French Oak
Dimensions variable
When The Golden Comes To Dust
2018
Brass
180cm diameter
2018
Brass
180cm diameter
“Hoe lank sal dit duur
...en in aanraking met die droom?”
2018
Tissue paper, acrylic ink and wood
Dimensions variable
...en in aanraking met die droom?”
2018
Tissue paper, acrylic ink and wood
Dimensions variable
Fovntain
2018
Solo Exhibition
Smith Studio, SA
2018
Solo Exhibition
Smith Studio, SA
FOVNTAIN explores installation and sculpture, though keeps true to the methodology of printmaking in its execution and presentation. Meticulousness, extreme attention to detail, process-driven, repetition and cleanliness are some of the key characteristics of printmaking. The materials used in the exhibition are the same materials a printmaker would use in their everyday routine making matrixes and prints: brass, paper, tissue, ferric-chloride, ink and pigment.
The work has become devoid of all marks of self-expression and any pictorial diversity. Through the process of breaking information down into an abstract form, the artist’s aim is for the work to become less personal, and through the process, more public.
Visagie says, “My work, derived from a personal experience and based on memory, cannot be conveyed to the viewer through mere pictorial imagery. Similar to Yves Klein’s blue monochromatic paintings, I am magnifying the idea of ambience in connection with notions of perception and reception.”
The exhibition was accompanied by a short story by South African author, Damon Galgut:
TWO BROTHERS
I.
To escape from their country, a man and his brother stow away on a ship. They hide below the deck, in a narrow space between two storage containers, the sound of massive engines working underneath them, and they are here for perhaps four days before they are discovered. Then they are dragged out into the light, which almost blinds them. The world is white and edgeless and they can hardly see the faces of the sailors who beat them, or the captain who sits in judgement on them, or the huge grey circle of sea that is now their fate. They are set adrift, clinging to the broken remains of a crate. They float through light, they float through dark. Their sight has come back to them, but there is nothing to see except for water, which takes on the infinite forms of absence, now pouring and flowing, now placid and still, now creasing into lines that rise and fall, rise and fall. They do not speak, or if they do, only a little, because words are no longer the point. Then the man’s brother drowns. He lets go of the crate and sinks beneath the water, his face twisted so that he seems to be smiling. (Or possibly he is smiling.) The clear lines of him hover for a moment, then fade away, as if he’s being erased. Light and dark, light and dark. How many times? Why does it matter? The man washes up on a stony beach, the edge of a continent he’s never stood upon before.
II.
Years later, he is working in a menial position in the home of a powerful government official. He sweeps floors, polishes shoes, carries things for people who don’t really see him. The man is no longer the man, not as he used to be. He has learned a new language, he has acquired a new name. He has made up a past which contains only elements of the truth. He hardly ever thinks about the real past, or only late at night, when he’s alone in his room. But on one particular day, the past rises up in him, against his will. He is sent to a courtyard to clean a fountain, which has become covered with verdigris. (Time undoes the world continually, only labour can restore it.) As he scrapes at the metal, something about the running water mesmerises the man, drawing him in and back, so that suddenly he is there again, in the instant where his old life ended. Vividly, intensely, he sees his brother, in the moment of his letting go. Except that this time he’s the one sinking under the water, the world fading gently overhead. And in this dream of drowning, the man enters a zone where he isn’t here and isn’t there, like a state of endless arrival. It’s beautiful in the place between places, where air has turned into water. You fall and fall endlessly, and it’s just like flying. Do you know what I mean?
The work has become devoid of all marks of self-expression and any pictorial diversity. Through the process of breaking information down into an abstract form, the artist’s aim is for the work to become less personal, and through the process, more public.
Visagie says, “My work, derived from a personal experience and based on memory, cannot be conveyed to the viewer through mere pictorial imagery. Similar to Yves Klein’s blue monochromatic paintings, I am magnifying the idea of ambience in connection with notions of perception and reception.”
The exhibition was accompanied by a short story by South African author, Damon Galgut:
TWO BROTHERS
I.
To escape from their country, a man and his brother stow away on a ship. They hide below the deck, in a narrow space between two storage containers, the sound of massive engines working underneath them, and they are here for perhaps four days before they are discovered. Then they are dragged out into the light, which almost blinds them. The world is white and edgeless and they can hardly see the faces of the sailors who beat them, or the captain who sits in judgement on them, or the huge grey circle of sea that is now their fate. They are set adrift, clinging to the broken remains of a crate. They float through light, they float through dark. Their sight has come back to them, but there is nothing to see except for water, which takes on the infinite forms of absence, now pouring and flowing, now placid and still, now creasing into lines that rise and fall, rise and fall. They do not speak, or if they do, only a little, because words are no longer the point. Then the man’s brother drowns. He lets go of the crate and sinks beneath the water, his face twisted so that he seems to be smiling. (Or possibly he is smiling.) The clear lines of him hover for a moment, then fade away, as if he’s being erased. Light and dark, light and dark. How many times? Why does it matter? The man washes up on a stony beach, the edge of a continent he’s never stood upon before.
II.
Years later, he is working in a menial position in the home of a powerful government official. He sweeps floors, polishes shoes, carries things for people who don’t really see him. The man is no longer the man, not as he used to be. He has learned a new language, he has acquired a new name. He has made up a past which contains only elements of the truth. He hardly ever thinks about the real past, or only late at night, when he’s alone in his room. But on one particular day, the past rises up in him, against his will. He is sent to a courtyard to clean a fountain, which has become covered with verdigris. (Time undoes the world continually, only labour can restore it.) As he scrapes at the metal, something about the running water mesmerises the man, drawing him in and back, so that suddenly he is there again, in the instant where his old life ended. Vividly, intensely, he sees his brother, in the moment of his letting go. Except that this time he’s the one sinking under the water, the world fading gently overhead. And in this dream of drowning, the man enters a zone where he isn’t here and isn’t there, like a state of endless arrival. It’s beautiful in the place between places, where air has turned into water. You fall and fall endlessly, and it’s just like flying. Do you know what I mean?